Our lens

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.”
– Janis Joplin

I think a creative way to build this page is to create an ongoing conversation. I can’t speak for everyone, but my lens/vision/perspective is constantly changing. I am always questioning and analyzing the interactions and experience I have and the information I read. I need to grow from my peers in this group, so I’m curious to hear how everyone defines the lens in which they view the world and how it has influenced your research.

“…These children have no knowledge of the other world in which I’ve lived most of my life and that the children in that other world have not the slightest notion as to who these children are and will not likely ever know them later on, not at least on anything like equal terms, unless a couple of these kids get into college. Even if they meet each other then, it may not be the same, because the sweetness of too many of these inner-city children will have been somewhat corroded by that time. Some of it may be replaced by hardness, some by caution, some by calculation rooted in unspoken fear. I believe for 40 years, and still believe today, that we would be an infinitely better nation if they knew each other now.” – The Shame of the Nation

10/10/12

At this point, our topics within education are still developing, but a common lens seems to be what education’s role is and can be within global systems.  Is it to give us tools and perspective to challenge what is broken as activists and global citizens (Anne and Taylor)?  Is it to fill a space already prepared within society for us, ie the child who inherits the farming profession or the business student expected to become an executive (Brenna)?  Is it to understand others better by learning new ways to understand and access their stories (Taylor)?  How do different countries view the role of education, how has that affected their attitude towards it, and its response (Grace)?  We are not limiting ourselves to formalized education nor are we ignoring it.  We are looking at education’s possibilities and faults in its creation of and reaction to the world we live in, in its diversity of forms.